12/2/12

Source AP December 1st 2012: "The board of trustees for the American Psychiatric Association voted Saturday in suburban Washington, D.C., on scores of revisions that have been in the works for several years. Details will come next May when the group's fifth diagnostic manual is published. "

"The trustees made the final decision on what proposals made the cut; recommendations came from experts in several task force groups assigned to evaluate different mental illnesses."

The only thing for sure is that they are -- Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." Minnesota Public Radio

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The APA will not officially disclose the actual changes until the DSM-5 is published, but from earlier in the year we have a pretty good idea anyways...

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Source Med Page Today:

Whats changed:

Gender identity disorder. Individuals who believe their biological gender doesn't match their gender identification will no longer be labeled with a disorder. Instead, if they seek psychiatric treatment, they can be labeled with "gender dysphoria."

The workgroup responsible for dealing with the hot-button issue considered a variety of other approaches, addressed later in this article. Ultimately they settled on a formal diagnosis -- potentially qualifying a patient for insurance-paid treatment if they want it -- but with a less pejorative name than "disorder."

What the APA refused to change:

Transgenderism as a V code. In seeking to destigmatize what was called gender identity disorder in DSM-IV, one proposal was to list it -- with or without a new name -- as a so-called V Code. In DSM-IV, this was a chart code used to flag items of clinical interest that were not diagnosable or treatable conditions in their own right -- such as problems at school or noncompliance with treatment.

It was rejected, as were suggestions that the condition be dropped from DSM-5 altogether.